The Emerald Rose

        The World Cup has always been a ray of sunshine in an other than that downer area we call THE world for me for years. It is a very tightly orchestrated and controlled event, but they let people kick back and party hearty for a while. From the goofy get ups and tons of face paint folks will always find something new, (and sometimes annoying) this year it was the vuvuzela. No one quite expected them, and they hit like a rogue wave. Remember the old “a penny for your thoughts”,…well how about a penny for every vuvuzela at the games? Man, I’d be rich beyond imagination, a little deaf perhaps, but rolling in dough.

       I did get a peek at a story on the wire about the immediate action being contemplated to try and ban the little “bee-buzzer” from all American sporting events, and how about the extra “filters” all the networks had to install just to “retard” the sound a bit for the TV audiences?

      But now we settle back into the world of “doo-doo” for another four years. All the “almost” soccer fans go back to something else, and are rationalizing it a million ways from tomorrow. Here’s some of the things I’ve heard at the Pub as their reasons to go back to all the other “manly” sports, like baseball, American Football, Ice Hockey, basketball, and and even that most venerable of “watching the grass grow” sports,…golf!

          “Theres not enough scoring”

          “How can something end in a draw? That’s dumb!”

          “All they do is run around, there’s no organization or ‘plays’, and everything is a lucky shot, no real skill there.”

         “You mean you have to sit for an entire 45 minutes before you can go to the toilet, or you might miss something. How stupid is that, can’t they at least throw in a few commercials here and there?”

         “Talk about backwards,…there’s no video replay to catch a bad call, and even a blind guy could see a whole lot of those going on.

         “Why don’t they run it like ‘March Madness’, then they could have 64 teams starting out and go straight to one loss and you’re out. This ‘bracket’ stuff is a waste of time.”

        “They always seem to have it in stupid countries half way around the world and you have to get up at 5:00 in the morning to watch a game. It should be on Saturday and Sunday afternoon on some channel so it won’t interfere with baseball and NASCAR.”

        “But I just about get into it and that’s it, it’s all over for four more years, that’s really stupid. If that many folks around the world like it that much they should do it every year,….like the Superbowl.”

        (sigh!) So what do we do? I guess more “PRE” World Cup to explain things a little better and let the “rookies” see what it’s all about. And maybe the big dog advertisers like Budweiser could put out a “Chairman Mao” type little red book with pictures and give them away a month before the Cup in bars and Pubs, with basic rules recap, illustrations and examples of specific penalties, a glossary of terms, i.e. “touch”, “corner kick”, “throw in”, etc. and explanations about things like “Why are the goalies always dressed differently from the rest of the team?” Or what is a yellow card versus a red card and ” What does that mean when they are out for the next game, that seems a little severe.” 

FLASH OF BRILLIANCE!!  In fact they could make the front cover of the book a bright yellow, and the back cover a fire engine red, and if it were small enough to fit in a shirt pocket we could let folks in the Pub “vote” on the issue. You know, when a call is made you reach in your pocket , like the referee, pull out your little book, and flash either the yellow or the red to the bartender to let him/her know your opinion of the right call. (It can also double to order another drink when the din of the Pub is high,….yellow card means “another beer” , red card is for a double shot of Jamisons, and you are out! (God sometimes my mind just does this all by itself.) Remind me of it for next world cup, ….. OH! and sims, how about a simple “app” for the smartphones with definitions and illustrations of fouls, and free and penalty kick info as well as “corner” etc. You got four years to get it together and we can market it world wide and then the fans can have an “instant feedback” method which transmits directly to a network computer mainframe and then flips to the announcers so they can see the “tenor” of the public perception of calls, so they can incite more accurately and get ratings up even more.

        If I answered every one of those questions three time a day during the cup period of June and July I answered them a hundred times a day, only to get the universal American “Well that’s stupid.” And now they are happy and can go back to watching the Golf match,…(ah the thrill of watching the grass grow, and the agony of watching “the cut” !)

           Well so much for today,….back on the hunt for a “Good News” newspaper or magazine,…Lord knows you ain’t gonna find it on CNN, MSNBC, FOX or any of the network news programs.

          FLASH,…..FLASH,….FLASH………. “And in the good news department today we have been able to confirm with several of our inside sources that the sun did indeed rise this morning, and has a very high probability of setting in the western sky this evening.,……we will update you on any further information on this very important story as we obtain more information,….now back to your regularly scheduled programming!”

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